By Danielle Selber

As we enter a new year still in isolation and uncertainty, our most pressing job as Jewish communal professionals is to make sure our people know that we still see them.

We are deep in the winter doldrums of what a friend called “March 284th.” Our coworkers and fellow students are on our screens and there is no breakroom or student lounge. Friendships have shifted from who is nearby to who is using the same asynchronous messaging app. Sundays feel like Tuesdays and our work pants are collecting dust in our closets.

Just because it’s a new normal, doesn’t make it normal. I work as a matchmaker for Tribe 12, a nonprofit which builds community for 20s and 30s in Philadelphia. As a Jewish professional, what is my core responsibility to my constituents at this deeply strange moment in time? In the simplest terms, I believe it is to make sure each person feels seen.

A lifestyle upended

A hopefully not necessary disclaimer: many people have been affected in life-altering and life-ending ways by the pandemic. Most people I personally interact with are single and their primary reason for engaging with my organization is to find romantic partnership. No one is saying that not being able to go to happy hours or on first dates compares to the horrors of COVID. Most of them have experience with the virus firsthand, whether themselves or through family or from being essential workers. The reality of this disease is separate from the everyday experiences of my constituents, and my speaking about their experiences does not discount that reality.

Unsurprisingly, life in relative lockdown has been a bummer to 20s and 30s. With bars, restaurants, concert venues and gyms closed, the ability to maintain existing connections, let alone find someone new, are sparse. Many of these single 20s and 30s live alone, having chosen a tiny apartment in the heart of the city in exchange for a bustling life that now does not exist. I hear a lot about loneliness and an almost numbing sense of isolation. The daily interactions we used to barely notice, like seeing the same bus driver or being served by the same friendly barista, are precisely the ones my single constituents have told me they miss most.

Back to basics

So what have 20s and 30s been doing to cope in a year like no other? For one, they have gotten creative with all this new downtime. Calligraphy and adult coloring books are all the rage. Everyone seems to have redecorated, or at least enough to make their Zoom background look Pinterest-worthy. And they’ve also been leaning into the cozy familiarity of nostalgia — rewatching Star Wars and Mean Girls, texting exes, and wearing hair scrunchies (the sartorial equivalent of a bowl of mom’s chicken soup).

What’s particularly interesting, though, is how some of my constituents are going back even further than the 90s — like, thousands of years back. I’m talking baking, pickling, gardening, fermenting, and making sourdough bread, which is so popular it has become a meme of itself. Add to that list sewing clothes, tending to backyard chickens, salting meats… have we noticed that all of these “quarantine hobbies” are the very activities of our ancestors? We survived for centuries in exile and in shtetls through these essential skills. Now many are surviving 2020 by turning, almost magnetically, to the same ancestral practices. Is it any wonder that we are comforted by the feel of earth on our hands and the smell of rising bread?

Living in a constant state of disequilibrium like we are also echoes back to our ancestry. Jews have adapted to diaspora; we are used to being the outsiders and being restricted in movement, choices and freedoms. My husband was born in Moscow, Russia before the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories of Jewish life from that time revolve around \ lighting Shabbat candles in basements and taking Hebrew classes secretly at the risk of one’s life. Jews have grown accustomed to these long stretches of uncomfortable, uncertain times where we are in distress with no exit in sight. For better or worse, we’ve become good at this.

Permission to engage

Even in ordinary, non-2020 times, 20s and 30s exist in a bit of a Jewish communal limbo. Someone young and often single is between life stages and therefore in between the checkpoints of Jewish life — too old for Jewish college life like Hillel, not yet ready to enter the family-centered synagogue world.

For this demographic, the High Holidays act like a boomerang, a both obligatory and welcomed pull to home and Judaism. It might be the only time they go to synagogue, or the only time they see certain family members. Fears of travel and of infecting elderly relatives stopped many from making that pilgrimage in 2020. That yearly reset, guided by the Jewish calendar, was either abandoned or very different than ever before. Just like the cadence of their days has been interrupted, so too has their Jewish engagement.

I’ve heard constituents over the years say they see Judaism as something that happens at synagogue — an ‘outside the home’, outsourced activity, led and brokered by clergy or others with expertise. Here’s some history on one foot: when the holiest place in Judaism, the Temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed thousands of years ago, it is said that the divine presence of God, the schechina, was relocated. But not to another physical place — just to anywhere that Jewish people were.

What that means is that though the synagogue has its rightful place in Jewish life, it is the home that is the spiritual center of Judaism. In the many places we have been exiled throughout history — ancient Egypt and Babylon; later Eastern Europe and Argentina; today, America and the UK — the divine presence was there. That also means that it’s there in a constituent’s studio apartment on Rittenhouse Square, or the AirBNB someone is quarantining in, and it was certainly there in that basement in Moscow. Every home is holy.

In the absence of physical interaction, my organization has adapted by sending snail mail — ritual objects like havdallah candles and gender-neutral prayer cards as well as holiday sweets and craft projects. These little tokens are more than trinkets. A hand-delivered challah or a Rosh Hashanah reflection journal makes Judaism tangible, something you can hold in your hand and bring into your home. It breaks that invisible wall that separates ‘inside Judaism’ from ‘outside Judaism’. It’s also an intimate, personal reach out in a time where those are hard to come by. It can remind a person who is perhaps lonely or feeling down that someone sees them — cares about them — remembers them.

Accept the responsibility

Regardless of if we would have chosen it, we as Jewish communal professionals have a responsibility in this moment. This is what’s at the heart of the matter — alleviating loneliness, isolation, pain. A small balm, a tiny bandaid on a broken world.

The incidental kindnesses of someone holding the elevator or picking up a dropped pen are no longer a part of our daily lives. There is a gravity to that loss. My constituents are singles in their 20s and 30s; yours might be families with young children or camp-aged teenagers or observant LGBTQIA+ identifying folx. Regardless of demographic, geography or identity, everyone wants to be seen.

David W. Ausburger said, “Being seen is so close to being loved that to the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” When a constituent was recently diagnosed with COVID, my instinct to run to his door with matzah ball soup was quelled by basic common sense. Instead my colleague sent a hand-picked care package, we made a donation in his name to a charity he supports, and I sent a card from all of us that stated, ‘You Are Not Alone’.

We adapted — just like our ancestors before us.

Danielle Selber is Tribe 12’s in-house matchmaker, offering a casual and personalized dating alternative for Philadelphia’s Jewish 20s and 30s. She received her Masters in Jewish Studies from Gratz College where she completed a thesis on trends in secular Jewish dating. In 2020, she has helped many organizations add virtual dating opportunities to their communal offerings. Contact: danielle@tribe12.org.